Bettie Page, the legendary 1950’s pinup, fetish model, and Playboy Playmate, died in Los Angeles last night due to complications of a heart attack she suffered on December 2nd. The original Viagra was 85. The New York Times reports:

“In her trademark raven bangs, spike heels and killer curves, Ms. Page was the most famous pinup girl of the post-World War II era, a centerfold on a million locker doors and garage walls. She was also a major influence in the fashion industry and a target of Senator Estes Kefauver’s anti-pornography investigators. But in 1957, at the height of her fame, she disappeared, and for three decades her private life — two failed marriages, a fight against poverty and mental illness, resurrection as a born-again Christian, years of seclusion in Southern California — was a mystery to all but a few close friends. Then in the late 1980s and early ’90s, she was rediscovered and a Bettie Page renaissance began. David Stevens, creator of the comic-book and later movie character the Rocketeer, immortalized her as the Rocketeer’s girlfriend. Fashion designers revived her look. Uma Thurman, in bangs, reincarnated Bettie in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction,” and Demi Moore, Madonna and others appeared in Page-like photos.”

She lived a long life and died an icon, so this really isn’t sad. What is sad, however, are the doughy college chicks with gauge earrings who will now dye their hair even blacker and get bangs and Bettie Page tattoos as some sort of ironic statement on sexual freedom they’ll talk about in their Women’s Studies class. Preferably with ice cream.